Florence Pugh returned to her roots with “Oppenheimer.”
Despite not having worked with writer/director Christopher Nolan before, the Oscar-nominated actress told the Radio Times (via Daily Mail) that being on set was reminiscent of her early career.
“It reminded me of the early days when I was used to a fast-paced way of working — where, if you lost a scene from the day, you would lose it from the movie,” Pugh said. “It’s one of the biggest movies I’ve made. Chris’ approach is similar to indie movie-making.”
She added, “When I walked on set, I couldn’t believe there was that similar, incredible adrenaline, which I hadn’t felt on a massive movie for a long time. It’s a wonderful thing to inject into a film set — believing in yourself and what you’re making.”
Pugh noted that she “loved stretching any size of role, any obscure character” throughout her varied career, saying, “There are things where I don’t know how I mustered the courage, but I pushed myself off the cliff and hoped the wings came out.”
The “Little Women” star previously said that collaborating with Nolan was “quite possibly one of the most thrilling experiences” since Nolan’s “dedication to the craft of filmmaking and old filmmaking is just magical to watch.”
Pugh said, “To just watch every single crew member on that set work so hard for him, to get his approval. And not like in a weird way, but like everybody knows who they’re working for and everybody’s proud of being there. Everybody has so much pride in their own work and so what that does is it means that everybody is constantly trying to be better the next day. And I’ve never seen that feeling on set before.”
The “Black Widow” actress also recently recalled receiving flack for seemingly swapping independent films for the MCU.
“So many people in the indie film world were really pissed off at me. They were like, ‘Great, now she’s gone forever,’” Pugh told Time magazine earlier this year. “And I’m like, no, I’m working as hard as I used to work. I’ve always done back-to-back movies. It’s just people are watching them now. You just have to be a bit more organized with your schedule.”
In addition to “Oppenheimer,” Pugh appears in “Dune: Part Two,” along with “The Pack,” “The Maid,” Netflix’s “East of Eden,” and “We Live in Time.”
Pugh’s “Oppenheimer” co-star Cillian Murphy similarly shared on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast that Nolan’s period piece had the air of an on-the-ground independent film.
“The pace of that was insane,” Murphy said. “The sets are huge, but it feels like being on an independent movie. There’s just Chris and the cameraman. One camera always, unless there’s some huge, huge set piece, and the boom op and that’s it. There’s no video village, there’s no monitors, nothing. He’s a very analog filmmaker.”
